Chapter 39 #2
“She sure did, honey. Told me to take care of you. Dr. Walter is on her way. There’s no camera in here.
But we got them in the hallway. Act right while you’re out there.
None in your room, though. You’ll be safe with us.
” She squeezes my cheeks like she used to when I was a kid and she was my mom’s nurse.
“But look at you! My little Scoutie. All grown up. Girl, you look good!” Grabbing my hand, she brushes over my simple gold band. “And married. Wow. Where does time go?”
I get a tear in my eye, remembering all the times she brought me pineapple upside-down cake she’d make just for me.
So I could sit in the back after school and play.
She’d even entertain me on her breaks. Mom said it was because she lost her granddaughter.
And that would make me play extra hard with her. To make her feel better.
“It’s so good to see you, Miss Quince.”
She gives me another tight squeeze. “Same. And you ask any of us if you need anything. No one’s going to mess with you. You hear me?”
I nod, a lump tightening my throat. “Who else is aware?”
“Your mama made sure the nurses up here on nights knew. A couple on the day shift. I’ll be here until seven. And, of course, Dr. Walter.”
As if called, in walks the woman herself. Her red hair tied into a bun. Neat, but unraveling around the edges. Thick glasses sliding down her nose. And a tired, annoyed look on her face that all my mom’s friends from work have stitched into their wrinkles.
With a deep inhale, she taps on the screen of a tablet. “You’re in big trouble. Apparently, you’re delusional. Suicidal. Even becoming psychotic. Hallucinations, they said.”
Her face is serious, but I wait for the punchline. The moment crawls on for so long, my heart picks up speed again.
“Well, I’m not—”
“Welcome to the Wellness Center, Scoutie! We’ll make you all better in just a brief twenty-four hours. You’ll be my miracle patient. The one I sprinkled psychiatric fairy dust on and fixed all your problems! That’s how good I am.”
I chuckle at her warped sense of humor. She and Mom trained together during their intern year in neurology rotations. And they’ve “bonded for life,” telling me “it’s something you can only understand once you’ve been through the war of internship.”
Quincy shakes her finger at me. “I gotta do my rounds, but you act as if you had a finger up your ass but aren’t happy about it when you leave this room.”
“I will. Thank you, Miss Quince.”
Dr. Walter gives her some other instructions and returns to me with a serious look covering her face as she drops onto a rolling stool. “What are we going to do with you? Disobeying the president?” She tuts at me dramatically.
“Aren’t you disobeying orders?”
She smirks. “If an administrator thinks a psychiatrist is going to follow arbitrary rules, they’re naive.
Likely to the point of having serious mother issues.
But most likely, highly narcissistic.” Waving a hand in front of her face, she tosses away her thoughts.
“But that’s not the point. The point is, Scout, that your mother is coming to sneak you out of here in a moment. She wanted to talk to you.”
With a glance at her watch, she continues. “I’m leaving for the evening in about half an hour, then I’ll see you in the morning for rounds. At which point, you’ll be cured, I tell you. Right?”
“Right?”
“Right. That means…”
“Um…” I’m not sure what she’s getting at.
“That means that you’ll follow these arbitrary rules and regulations.
Pretend you’re that thing they call normal.
Bless the Seven. Take a pill. Say you love it.
All of that. You’re going into surgery, right?
That’s all surgeons do—obey rules. But we need concrete thinkers, mechanics of the medical world.
” Standing back, she crosses her arms. “Just like we need rebels.”
Mechanics. That’s true.
Just like Apollo.
There’s a little tap on the door. Dr. Walter throws it open and pulls my mom inside.
Mom grabs me in a hug, and then squeezes Dr. Walter’s arm. “Thanks, Iris. Truly.”
“Meh, don’t mention it. She needs to be back up here by about nine for rounds on camera. But the night nurses know. We’ll take care of her. Get her out tomorrow morning.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. Especially when we make it to Mom’s office, and she pulls up the autopsy records for us to go through.
Now that I think of it?
That’s probably a weird thing to make me feel relaxed, but it does.
“See? On this one, the brain was extracted. She was a Sigma sister.” I point to the report.
“And these Sigma sisters were missing a lot of body parts. But there’s one Iota girl.
She had her small intestines ripped open.
There’s a surgical triangular shape cut out of it.
” My finger trails over the screen as I scroll through.
Mom leans over my shoulder, squinting. “Good eye. This one? I can’t read that. Too small. Where are my glasses?”
“It says that a piece of his lung was biopsied. Rowan Greaves’s roommate.”
“The boy we looked up earlier? The one who was given barbiturates and alcohol?”
“Yep. And then Ellis…”
“Ellison Williams.” Mom’s eyes search the ceiling. “It was too difficult to tell at first.”
“But then they saw a piece of her liver was gone,” I finish, tapping on the screen.
She finds her glasses and paces around the room. “Brain. Small intestines. Lungs. Liver.”
“The cuts are surgical. Like they’re made with a blade.”
“Could be anyone with connections to here.”
I stretch, taking another sip of the coffee we got from the break room.
“Other than being Greek life students, I don’t see any connection between the victims. One was Sigma, one Iota, one Omega, and one a Beta.
” I swivel around and raise my eyebrows with a sudden thought. “Just Theta and Delta left, I suppose.”
“So why is someone after you? And what is this person doing with these organ samples?”
“I figured it’s because of watching Ellis get murdered. And I’m convinced it’s Ayan doing it. But the body parts? They remind me of those Egyptian canopic jars where they stored organs.”
Mom slumps into the chair across from me. Kicking her heels up on her desk, she reaches for the fast-food bag, but can’t grab it. “Hand me a burger. I need to eat so I can think. This is a puzzle.”
I slide one over to her. And return to scrolling mindlessly through the reports. Mom had to ask Xavier Cardell to help us. He told her that his sources said the records are in the hospital’s system, but hidden. His hackers helped.
“Puzzle!” Biting the inside of my lip, I hurriedly type on the keyboard.
“Yes, it is.”
“No… No! This reminds me of a dissection puzzle.”
“Oh! Oh, my smart genius baby.” Mom sits up and spits out a bite of burger accidentally. “That’s it. The triangles.”
“And some squares and rectangles.”
“But they fit.”
“Into a tangram puzzle.”
Mom sits back for a moment, confusion furrowing her brow. “Like a key?”
“Yeah. Possibly. However…”
Doom strikes my chest. The fluorescent lights hum. I can’t answer immediately. Some distant hospital monitor beeps, interrupting me. My voice seeps out in a low whisper.
“If that’s a key… What does it open?”